


I Killed for You

by xiexemxer



Category: Invader Zim
Genre: Blood, Death, F/F, F/M, Gen, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, M/M, Multi, Other, Prison, Self-Destruction, Self-Harm, Self-Hatred, Self-Sacrifice, Song Reference, War, break out - Freeform, prison break out, space
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-23
Updated: 2020-02-23
Packaged: 2021-02-28 02:35:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,188
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22866445
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xiexemxer/pseuds/xiexemxer
Summary: Saw a few song lyric tags going on around the Invader Zim fandom and decided to jump in.  Here is a story based on the lyrics of Alec Benjamin's song "If I Killed Someone for You", where Zim is trying to save Dib and Gaz from the Irkens who abducted them onto an Armada ship.
Relationships: Dib & Gaz (Invader Zim), Dib & Zim (Invader Zim), Gaz & Zim (Invader Zim)
Comments: 3
Kudos: 27





	I Killed for You

"What...what did--" the Irken gagged when his small hands brushed against his green face, smearing the thick substance that landed on his cheek. Beneath him, PAK arm still deep within her belly, laid a twitching Irken soldier. Her head blocked the door to a cell from fully closing. It kept slamming into her, beating her broken body further. Zim gulped.

"Zim is sorry that this happened," he whispered under his breath, eyes closing tightly while he fought back the pain. His PAK attacked him and yet at the same time it still obeyed his commands. The pain shooting up his spine into his central nervous system could not stop him now. One magenta eye at a time opened to look down at his hands, blood on the black gloves, dripping into a pool beneath him. Allowing him to see what a traitor he became.

Breathing carefully, Zim's antenna twitched. He listened to a siren wail somewhere in the distance, heard it hallow against the pain radiating throughout his head, and he stared into his own eyes. He did not recognize the reflection.

"My Tallest will not forgive," he muttered while stepping over the body with the spider appendages from his PAK. He pulled the bladed end of one out of the Irken soldier's stomach and paused before using it to push her into the cell. The door closed behind him and latched into place. "Zim will not lie, no, there will be no point. It had to be done," he continues to mutter, his spider legs moving to walk upon the ceiling of the Irken ship, quietly passing overhead while guards run beneath him. 

He stopped and hung, blood dripping slowly off the gloves until he saw a droplet nearly hit the head of a passing soldier. Quickly he wiped his hands on his tunic and dared not to breathe until the soldier passed.

 _For them_ , he thought. _It had to be done for them. We must leave this place!_ His thoughts were heavy but he pushed through the zaps from his pack and continued down the hall. This was level 7v, hall 6. The cell where the humans should be stored was one level down. The quickest way would be to move through the cords to access their cell, but could the humans fit for the retrieval or would he need to break through the--"Aaah!" he yowled, the pain crippling the small ex-invader and sending him tumbling down to the floor.

"I heard something over here!" an Irken soldier shouted. There was a muffled noise of contempt as a higher-ranking soldier hit the speaker.

"Don't speak without being addressed!" the leader of that squadron hissed. This gave Zim time to scramble to his feet, his PAK's spider limbs digging into the walls around him to climb upwards again. His eyes were barely open, but he could feel the difference in exterior between the regular cords and a hatch for maintenance. Swiftly, he climbed inside and closed the hatch with a thud.

"There is nothing here, you idiot!" the squadron leader growled when they arrived at the intersection Zim once fell to. None of them looked up to notice the scratches and digs in the walls. "The urrth creatures could not have gotten far, split up!"

"...They do not know it is Zim," he whispered once the other Irkens were gone from his vision. The grated hatch allowed some light and enough air to breath while he waited through the current wave. This knowledge fueled the small ex-invader. If they remained unaware of Zim then he--he chose his thoughts carefully now--he could use the element of surprise to find the humans.

The maintenance tunnel was narrow. Zim retracts the spider appendages into his PAK and began to crawl forward, glad for the short stature he was otherwise cursed with. It took time and a few pauses when noise beneath him alerted that other soldiers or guards moved around, for Zim to come to a downward path. Luckily the monotony of movement calmed the receptors from his PAK and he was left with only the usual jolt every 93.7 Earth seconds.

Two of the four spider legs slipped from his PAK again as he eased his body down the track, holding on to the ledge above. This tube went down to the cargo hold of the ship; he did not need that. Instead, he carefully swung his body over so that his feet hit the ledge of the next level down--level 6, exactly where he needed to be. Expecting the layout of the ship to remain the same as he once remembered, and the cells to be similar to the last time he was captured and held there, Zim expected to be in the right location for discovering the cell holding his humans.

Those two were his humans, after all.

The Irken empire could have every other planet they desired, but they would not have Earth. Not after abandoning--Zim screeched again, his claws digging into his own green skin and tearing at the same spot as always. An inch from the base of his antenna, he ripped through the scar tissue and down into the sub-dermis. His own blood mingled with that of the fallen Irken soldier as he writhed in pain.

"Was that--?" Zim barely heard the muffled feminine voice.

"Zim! It's got to be him! Zim where are you?" Dib shouted into a wall. They weren't far. Gritting his zipped teeth, Zim crawled on his stomach, using all his will power to stop ripping himself apart. His breathing was ragged by the time he heard the human's banging into a wall. He stopped, turning to lay half on his PAK and half on his side toward the sound.

"He can't be here," the feminine voice, Gaz's voice, said. "It's a suicide mission, he can't be that stupid after all this shit."

"Shut up in there!" a rattling noise as an Irken guard beat against their doorway. The Irken didn't seem to be paying attention to what they said--or perhaps the guard was not equipped with a translator and thus did not understand their tongues. That was wise to avoid any weaknesses in the empathy blockers programmed into most PAK systems.

Zim put a hand against the side of the maintenance tunnel toward the siblings. His eyes narrowed in exhaustion. Would they understand? Finally, he did it, he became the monster the Dib-human always called him. He killed for them; killed his own for them. It was the first time in a long time. It was the first time he did it for another species, for what one on Earth would call a friend.

These thoughts sent another wave of electricity through his body and he banged his head into the tunnel floor to stop from screaming.

"Again...," Gaz whispered.

"It has to be...," Dib's voice followed.

Zim's PAK legs, only the top two, peeked out and activated small lasers. to begin cutting through the tunnel's wall toward the cell.

"Watch out, Gaz!" Dib grabbed his sister's arm and pulled her toward him in the small cell, keeping her out of the way of the bubbling metal before the laser finally cut through. It connected after cutting through a wide oval. When the metal plate clattered to the ground, the siblings were left to look over Zim's bloody body, large Magenta eyes wide and moist.

"Zim," they both breathed, revealed. Zim stared at them, wondering if they would do it--many an Irken would have. Would they turn him in, hand him over to the Almighty Tallest in exchange for their lives? For their planet.

Perhaps that is what Zim should have done in the first place.

Soldiers ran up to the guards outside and demanded to see the humans. Zim scrambled to his knees and cleared his throat. "We must go, follow Zim!" he half-whispered while reaching out a bloody hand to the humans.

Dib stared at it, looking at the dry and fresh blood, looking at Zim's injured head. Gaz did not hesitate. She grabbed Dib by the arm and Zim by the hand before they all squeezed into the tunnel. The humans were too large to remain here long, Zim noticed. He led them down the tunnel while straining his antenna to hear any disturbance within the inner structure.

Soon that door would be open, and they would be revealed to have disappeared. Any Irken half as brilliant as Zim would be able to realize it was Irken technology which cut through the wall and allowed for the humans to escape. They could not remain in the system long, both for that reason and because the humans were significantly slower in this terrain. Neither complained, however.

Once they crawled 20 more meters, Zim stopped and held a bloody gloved hand up. Gaz stopped; Dib hit her foot before he stopped as well. Other than a gruff grumble, neither spoke. Zim's head was already healing as the two spider legs appeared again, cutting another hole in the wall of the tunnel, this time larger. If his memory was correct--and at this point, he could only hope--they should be emptying into a weapons storage unit.

He was wrong.

Or, rather, things had changed in the time he was on Earth. This room now held food supplies rather than weapons, but in either case, it was empty and safe to climb out of the tunnel. Zim jumped down first and looked around before offering a stable hand for Gaz again. She took the help and crawled out of the tunnel. On one of the shelves, a box of sugary snacks from Earth glistened and called to her. She immediately went over to grab something. She and Dib barely had anything to eat since they were captured days ago.

Dib refused to take Zim's hand and subsequently fell out of the tunnel. Zim frowned but ignored him while using his back PAK legs to hold the metal wall back in place, the lasers now being used to re-join the cut section and slow down any pursuit.

"What happened?" Dib asked. Zim would not look at him. "Come on, tell me what happened--you're covered in something--is that blood?" he asked, obviously concerned. Zim looked away before nodding. He cringed another shock. How much longer could his body handle this? How was he even still standing? Perhaps the chemical imbalance that humans called adrenaline.

"It doesn't matter right now," Gaz interrupted. "We need to get off this ship." She threw a candy bar at Dib and walked up to Zim, looking down at him. It was the first time he didn't see anger in her eyes, only concentration. "What's our next move?"

He stared at her a moment before a smirk twitched on his lips. His fingers twitched as well, though that impulse was more destructive. "You have to understand what's at stake," he started, his eyes glancing at Dib. Could the siblings even tell?

"I think we get it, " Dib said while tearing into the candy bar. "We have to get out of here so...where is your ship?"

A bang in the tunnel behind them--the soldiers were following the trail. "No time to explain then," Zim sighed before clearing his throat and reaching into his pack. He pulled out a scroll-shaped object before unrolling it, showing a holographic screen. Quickly he scribbled a path down on the surface before overlaying it on top of an old set of Armada schematics. "Here, we're on layer 6, hall G13. If you follow this map, you'll find the escape pods. Take snacks, you can dis-dis-dis," he began to tremble, his body short-circuiting to stop his traitorous thoughts. He pushed through it. "distract the soldiers with the sugar. If you can find the weapons storage use this," he held out a badge and handed it to Gaz. When he first attacked the Irken soldier it had been for this. He hadn't realized it would be taken only in death.

Gaz took the badge. Dib took the tablet.

"What about you?" Dib asked. Zim couldn't see well at this point, but he heard the concern in the human's vocal vibrations.

"Zim...is the main distraction," he said with a smile. Ultimately it wasn't another Irken soldier he killed, Zim realized. He came on this ship to defy the Almighty Tallest. He came on this ship to betray his own people. Zim, ultimately, came to find himself killed. And, after all that strife on Earth, he would die only after becoming what the Dib had wanted him to be all along; a monster.

"No--" Dib started. Gaz had him by the arm, holding him back.

"Please, be happy. There is no reason to worry for Zim," the pained alien said with a forced grin. His mania now beaten down the same way the walls were being beaten against, Irken soldiers falling upon the melded wall.

"Come on Dib," Gaz whispered, pulling him out of the storage room. "We can't turn back--run!"

**Author's Note:**

> This takes place in the same AU as my main story, Intergalactic & Interpersonal where Zim's PAK is encoded to cause him pain to block flaws in his primary code. (Read the main story's prologue to get more information).
> 
> Alec Benjamin's songs are pretty good, highly recommend.  
> Looking for a Beta reader. Comment if interested.
> 
> Atm this is a one-shot. I may expand on it (alternate-alternate universe?) if there is interest.
> 
> See ya, XXX.


End file.
